Dr. Mary Keogh:

I thank the Chair, Senators, Deputies and colleagues who are here today. I am very pleased to be sitting alongside my colleagues from Dóchas for this presentation. I am here today to talk about how Ireland can strengthen its approach to reaching the aims that are furthest behind. I will focus my input on how Ireland can strengthen its commitment by ensuring its development programmes continue to make strides on the inclusion of persons with disabilities, who are very often the group most left behind, both in a development and humanitarian context.

Similar to Ms Van Lieshout, before I speak to some practical actions on this, I will comment briefly that the adoption of the 2030 agenda and the sustainable development goals was a landmark moment for people with disabilities and their representative organisations. The predecessor to the sustainable development goals, which were the millennium development goals, had no goal or indicator related to persons with disabilities because, at that stage, disability itself was not seen as development theme. This ended up having outright impacts and effects on persons with disabilities and the disability thematic sector, policies and programmes in a development context. The sustainable development goals, however, marked a sea change in this, with the inclusion of persons with disabilities now at the heart of the 2030 agenda, with the request and central commitment not to leave anyone behind until we reached the furthest behind first.

Without going into all of the development goals, as outlined earlier by Ms Van Lieshout, I will just highlight that five of the 17 development goals are relevant from a disability perspective. These range across SDG 4, quality education; SDG 8, decent work and economic growth; SDG 10, reduced inequalities; SDG 11, sustainable cities and communities; and SDG 17, partnerships for the goals. The SDGs, along with the specific targets and indicators, coupled with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, creates a new era for disability-inclusive development, which has seen wider progress over recent years.

That is the positive side. I shall now turn to the more critical side. As Ms Van Lieshout and Ms McKenna outlined, we are at crisis point regarding a number of conflicting polycrises. As Ireland prepares for its review this July at the high-level political forum, and with the upcoming SDG summit in September, it does so against this challenging backdrop which has been elaborated on by previous speakers. All of this is relevant for persons with disabilities as well.

Before I speak to the key area of data, I will highlight some of the key impacts the new crises have had on people with disabilities, particularly coming from the Covid period, the impact of Covid, and how we have seen this impact on the communities of persons with disabilities and their families in the countries we work in. Research we funded in 2020 and 2021, led by researchers with disabilities, highlighted the major barriers faced in accessing services during the time of the pandemic.

With respect to the SDG around education and employment, our researchers found through their work that digital technology and the way it has transitioned over the last number of years presented significant barriers. Persons with disabilities in the global south have particular difficulty with access to services and devices and to literally be able to use the devices everybody has in their hands regularly. There is a lack of access to fast Internet connections to download the most up-to-date information. There is also the matter of the financial means needed to purchase the data packages. While a person may have an accessible phone, there are challenges around being able to access data packages because a majority of persons with disabilities living in the global south live in poverty.

Ms Van Lieshout spoke about the climate crisis. Research we recently carried out in Madagascar and Bangladesh with organisations for persons with disabilities on the impact of the climate crisis has highlighted how the livelihoods of persons with disabilities and those of their family networks are all negatively impacted. Despite this, persons with disabilities and their representative organisations have no space to contribute to the national adaptation planning processes. Research that was carried out in 2021 found a minimal amount of climate adaptation plans at a national level included persons with disabilities. We shared this research most recently at COP27 to highlight disability as a critical issue from a climate crisis perspective.

As to the progress made, it is quite difficult to talk about progress on each SDG with respect to persons with disabilities because data remain a critical issue. Data on persons with disabilities are lacking behind those of other groups with regard to the monitoring of the sustainable development goals. Out of ten SDG indicators that require disaggregation by disability status, only two have data so far. This was emphasised in the SDG report in 2022. Lack of data in these situations can create dire consequences for persons with disabilities and this was the case during the Covid pandemic. Disability data are available for social protection goal 1 and unemployment goal 8. If persons with disabilities are not being measured as part of SDG progress, then gaps continue for them with respect to SDG implementation. Progress on the goals worsened due to the Covid pandemic, and we spoke to that just before. This has also adversely affected persons with disabilities as a group and has continued to compound their being left behind and left out.

I will outline some practical actions Ireland can take in the lead-up to the high-level political forum and to the summit that will happen in September. We urge the Government and other member states to work with organisations for persons with disabilities at home, such as Independent Living Movement Ireland, and at a global level with organisations such as the International Disability Alliance. All these organisations are able to bring their expertise to help us reach those furthest behind. Organisations of persons with disabilities are experts in their own lives. The second recommendation is to provide consistent reports on the development assistance committee, DAC, disability marker to highlight where funding flows in disability and inclusion go to and to be able to drill down further to check how much of that funding is being allocated to organisations of persons with disabilities in the global south. The third and last recommendation is to encourage other member states to take a coherent approach to collecting data on persons with disabilities. Ireland has been cited as a good example for using the Washington Group questions and carrying out a specific national disability survey. This could be championed as part of our development programme both domestically and through international co-operation. I thank members for their attention.